Metadata Watch Report #6 and Standards Framework Report #3

Appendix A: Educational Domain

Correspondent: Erik Duval, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

1. Standardization work

1.1 IEEE LTSC LOM

At this time, the IEEE LTSC (Learning Technologies Standardization Committee) LOM (Learning Object Metadata) group is focusing mainly on the ballot of the document that defines the so-called Base Scheme. This is the scheme that specifies the data elements, their value spaces and data types. The ballot of the document was successful, in that both sufficient ballots were returned, and that a sufficient number of them were positive. In order to maximize consensus, the 180 ballot comments were discussed, and a new version of the document underwent a so-called 'recirculation ballot'. In that process, both the number of positive ballots increased further, and some 75 new or follow-up comments were submitted. The working group is currently processing those comments and will probably go through at least one more recirculation ballot, after which the LOM specification will probably be finalized as a full IEEE standard.

Web: http://ltsc.ieee.org/
Next meeting: December 3-7, 2001, Hawaii, US

1.1.bis The Ottawa Metadata Summit

The December 2000 memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) and the LOM Working Group entered a more 'operational' phase at a meeting in Ottawa, in August 2001. Agreement was reached to work on the following problems:

Increasing the understanding in the broad community about the various functions of metadata, including cross-domain resource discovery (DCMI) and management and deployment of learning objects (LOM);
Dispelling misplaced perceptions that DCMI and LOM are competing;
Providing solutions to issues of technical interoperability between the DCMI and LOM schemas through the development and application of so-called application profiles (see earlier SCHEMAS reports).

1.2 CEN/CENELEC LTWS

The CEN/CENELEC (Centre Europeen de Normalisation) ISSS (Information Society Standardization System) LTWS (Learning Technologies WorkShop) is working on internationalization and localization of the LOM specification. At the moment, first drafts are available for the LOM document in French, German, Spanish, Catalan and Italian. Related activities deal with the availability of alternative language versions of a learning object, through a small and targeted LOM profile and with the description of language capabilities of a user. More recent projects within LTWS are working on:

Taxonomies and vocabularies (so as to increase semantic interoperability);
Educational Modelling Language (EML), which supports the arrangement of learning objects in educational meaningful constellations.
Web: http://www.cenorm.be/isss/Workshop/lt/Default.htm
Next meeting: October 3-5, 2001, Turino, I

2. Consortia based work

2.1 ARIADNE

The ARIADNE foundation is deploying version 3 of its Knowledge Pool System, a LOM based distributed repository of reusable learning objects. This version includes multilingual support for the currently balloted version of LOM. The associated course environment is also being upgraded: the new version supports deployment of learning objects from several knowledge pools.

Web: http://www.ariadne-eu.org/
Next meeting: November 21-24, 2001, Leuven, B

2.2 IMS

The IMS consortium recently released a 'white paper' on digital repositories. That paper sketches the 'problem scope' of this new working group that will evaluate the appropriateness of existing or newly proposed specifications and standards. There are strong relationships with many metadata issues.

Web: http://www.imsproject.org/
Continuous meetings of various groups and subgroups

2.3 ADL & SCORM

The ADL Sharable Course Object Reference Model (SCORM) is currently being updated to version 1.2, after the so-called 'plugfest' meeting of May-June 2001.

Web: http://www.adlnet.org/
Next Meeting: Plugfest 5, November 26-29, 2001, Orlando, Florida

2.4 EDNA

There seems to be no recent evolution on the Dublin Core based metadata specification of the Australian EdNA organization.

Web: http://standards.edna.edu.au/

2.5 EUN

The European Treasury Browser (ETB) project of EUN is organizing a three-week on-line discussion on the Quality of Web-based Learning Resources. The ETB thesaurus is in alpha version: it includes 1053 descriptors in 5 languages.

Web: http://www.eun.org/

2.6 Gateway to Educational Materials

The Gateway to Educational Materials currently contains 23,694 learning objects, accessible through a ('Bobby approved', i.e. 'accessible') web site.

Web: http://www.thegateway.org/

Maintained by: UK Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN)
Last updated: 13 November 2001